The problem of how to identify animals is a long-standing one. Brands, numbered ear tags and tattoos are some of the ways that farmers or ranchers have utilized to try to identify livestock. These identification devices are used to establish ownership and permit somewhat of a "trace-back" system to trace the animals back to the origin. This "trace-back" system is utilized for livestock and poultry disease control, residue control, quarantine control, payment and grading controls for packing houses, inter and intra state movement controls, and for breeding husbandry controls.
One of the problems with the aforementioned identification systems is that none is universally acceptable. Furthermore, ear tags and other things attached to animals can fall off, thereby destroying the integrity of the system.
When animals are to be slaughtered and processed through a packing house, the problem of universal identification becomes quite apparent since there are no good systems to identify brands, tattoos placed at the farm or ranch, and ear tags. One system has been to apply tattoos to the carcass of the animal before it has been slaughtered with a hammer-like device having inked projections thereon. Then, once the animal has the hair taken off the carcass in the slaughtering process, the tattoo becomes visible and can be utilized to identify that particular animal's carcass.
One problem with the packing plant tattoo system is that at certain times trimming occurs, and at such time if a portion of the carcass having the tattoo thereon is undesirable, it will be trimmed off and the identification tattoo will be rendered useless. Also, in other cases the tattoo numbers refer only to a buying station and cannot be used for the animal's farm of origin "trace back".
There are many stations for performing tasks for taking samples throughout a packing plant and it is a problem to coordinate this information and identify it with the particular carcass and then identify that carcass with the owner to trace its origin and make payments for grade and yield purposes. Consequently, there is a need for an identification system which coordinates and simplifies this process.